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Paying off your mortgage more quickly than the bank requires is a no lose investment.

As a personal finance writer I hear a lot of investment advice. To my skeptic's eye, much of it is too risky, unnecessarily complicated or involves hidden fees. The best advice I ever received was to pay off my mortgage. I did that seven years ago and have been reaping the benefits ever since.

This advice came not from a financial advisor, but from Marc Eisenson, an engineer and electrical contractor who is now retired. In 1991, shortly after I changed careers -- from law to journalism -- he sent me a copy of his book The Banker's Secret (Villard Books). It came with software that you could use to calculate how much money you could save in interest by paying off your mortgage more quickly than the bank requires.

The concept, which also applies to paying off credit card debt, is simple: your rate of return equals the interest rate on the loan. To test Eisenson's premise, I ran his software on the Mac Plus that I then owned -- how quaint! The results were dramatic.

At the time I didn't own a home, but Eisenson's message made such a huge impression, that when my husband and I bought our house in 1998, I kept The Banker's Secret in mind in dealing with our own banker. We were both self-employed in businesses that were thriving. Yet knowing that self-employment has ups and downs, we were very frightened of debt. We made as big a down payment as we could possibly afford, and took a mortgage for about 40% of the purchase price. That mortgage included a penalty for prepayment, but it only applied for the first year.

Meanwhile, when business profits exceeded what we needed to live on, we built a laddered portfolio of two-year U.S. Treasurys. At the time they were paying more interest than we were paying on our mortgage. When that was no longer true and the bonds started maturing, we took the principal, along with the interest we had earned on those investments and put every dime of it towards our mortgage. By the time we celebrated the fifth anniversary of home ownership, the property had doubled in value and we owned it free and clear.

Like other investments, this one involved trade-offs. While we were paying off our mortgage, the stock market was enjoying a tremendous run-up. Some friends were day trading. Others were taking huge mortgages and investing this money in the stock market. We put retirement funds into equities, but otherwise sat out what seemed like a party. Sometimes we wondered what we were missing. Then the dot-com bubble burst.

When the market swooned in 2008 it affected our businesses, but the roof over our heads was safe. We sleep soundly knowing that without a mortgage, our fixed expenses are very low.

Still not persuaded? Think of it this way: When you’ve paid down a dollar of debt, that’s a dollar you no longer owe. When you invest a dollar, you can't be sure whether it will grow or shrink.

Eisenson, 68, who went on to co-author another book, Invest in Yourself: Six Secrets to a Rich Life, bought a house in Olive Bridge, N.Y. five years ago and for the first time in many years has a mortgage. But he and his wife Nancy Castleman live a frugal lifestyle – they grow much of their own food. And he is still educating consumers about the benefits of debt reduction.

"If you're out of debt, you have a tremendous amount of freedom to decide what you want to do," he says. "If you're in debt, you're chained to your desk and if you lose your job you're really in trouble."

I'll vouch for that. Not having a mortgage gave us the liberty to turn down publishers' stingy offers for my latest book, Estate Planning Smarts, and publish it ourselves. That too, turned out to be a fabulous investment; the book has now gone through two editions and become a go-to guide for consumers. (I'll be blogging in 2012 about that venture, so stay tuned.)

Want to invest in your own debt? Without raiding your rainy day fund, which should cover six months to a year's worth of expenses, start by paying off credit card debt and high interest car loans. Then chisel away at your mortgage. The approach Eisenson advocates doesn't require a formal commitment on your part or any help from your bank. In fact, he warns against s0-called bi-weekly mortgages, in which banks basically charge a fee to do something you can do yourself.

Instead, pay what you can afford, when you can afford it. You can pay down the principal as you feel flush. Or if you need more discipline, add a set amount that you feel comfortable with (say $15 or $25) to your payment each month or double up on the monthly payment four times a year.

Other possibilities: use this year's bonus, the next tax refund or, if you play poker, your winnings at the card table. If a windfall comes your way in the form of an inheritance or investment earnings, apply at least part of it to the mortgage.

If you use a coupon book to make payments, chances are there is a line where you can write in whatever extra payments you're making. But even without that, the bank will automatically credit your account, Eisenson says. You can check their math a couple of times a year by asking for a statement showing how much you still owe.

Seeing that number decline can be a powerful motivator to pay down even more, Eisenson adds. "It becomes a wonderful habit."